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Well done to Gearbox for finishing this off - it would have been a sin if it didn't see the light of day in the end. The previews look good and I'm looking forward to picking it up when it reaches Europe on 6 May (PC version, of course, the Duke doesn't need some stinking console). I'm hoping for a shooter which emphasises funky weapons, crazy situations and bad jokes over "balance" and other hardcore trappings. Back when I was a student, DN3D was always the game for a fun blast while Quakeworld was for whose who took things a bit more seriously.

Anyway, Gearbox, how about you get cracking on Aliens: Colonial Marines now - or will that be done "when it's ready"?

I predict that the moment before the game is to be "released," a wormhole will open, occupying half the sky over Los Angeles. From it, millions of Octabrains will come forth, wreaking havoc and destruction while Battlelords appear and L.A.P.D. pigs are turned into L.A.R.D. cops. No, we have only just seen the early prophecy. In this Hollywood Holocaust, only those yielding laser tripmines, pipebombs, and microwave guns will survive.

The Duke was King back in 1995/1996. Back then I didn't have any form of income being a 12 year old and my folks didn't believe in allowance. I had to rely on some older kids in the neighborhood that would allow me to borrow the install CD's for Duke Nukem, Doom 2, and Quake.

Starting with Doom back in late 94 early 95, I must have spent hours playing it and going over every square inch of the maps. By the time Duke and Quake arrived there was always those discussion among the older kids of which was better. I never understood why Quake was better, no one in the neighborhood was online back then nor could do multiplayer of any form. Between Quake and Duke, the Duke had attitude, character, some depth you felt like you were playing as someone awesome. Quake though was just a man who would grunt every so often, not much different from Doom 2. As for the graphics, sure Quake was 3D in both objects and map but this was early primitive 3D. A decent art team making sprites could outshine 3D graphics back then.

Agreed. Not to mention the other niceties of Duke3D, such as blood dripping off the walls, the mirrors where you could actually see your own reflection, and being able to leave footprints when stepping over a blood puddle or out of water. I thought the graphics in Quake were awful compared to Duke3D back in that day, even though it was true 3D (granted, this was before glQuake made it's debut).

I bought a commercial package of "Pwads" and "Iwads" known as D!ZONE that was the best of the Multiplayer and Singleplayer scene for offline clients, and mods were able to overlay eachother

IWAD is the primary WAD for the game, and there can be only one loaded at the moment - you cannot have multiple "overlaying" each other. That's precisely what PWADS ("patch WADs") are for. If you replace an IWAD, you're pretty much replacing all game resources. You could take the original game IWAD and several PWADs and merge them into a single modded IWAD - that's what D!ZONE tool did.

there was a utility even that converted a wad for Doom1 to run in Doom2 and vis versa

Making such a conversion was trivial, because Doom 2 was, in modern terms, more like an expansion pack for Doom 1. Same eng

I never understood why Quake was better, no one in the neighborhood was online back then nor could do multiplayer of any form.

You explained it to yourself. Single player DN was far more fun than single player Quake (fans of my old Quake site will scream "heresy!" for this), but network and online play is where Quake shone. As funny as the Duke was, the people playing and modding Quake were even funnier and more fun.

Imagine playing your game and a nude woman comes around the corner -- and shoots you. Or Sant

Quake was a better *game*, as in it had better level design, more interesting enemy AI, better weapon balance, etc. Duke 3D had more humor, unique or interesting (but often impractical or useless) weapons, and levels that were made to look like real places, and for some people this made it more fun. But if you took the two and turned all the levels, models, and monsters into the equivalent of untextured grids, Quake would still be fun while I don't think I could say the same for Duke. That's not to say that

Yeah, but DN3D was the really the last good game of its breed, whereas Quake was the first of a new one (completely 3D). The Quake engine provided the basis for many fantastic games, including Half-Life.

it would have been a sin if it didn't see the light of day in the end.

Yeah, but now we'll have to look for a new nerdy injoke that is the equivalent of "When hell freezes over". I'm personally hoping the release date is pushed back at least once, just for the heck of it.

Back when I was a student, DN3D was always the game for a fun blast while Quakeworld was for whose who took things a bit more seriously.

Tripmines used to cause quite the bit of nerdrage. I personally am hoping those things find their way back into the game.

I haven't bought a game in years, but I absolutely positively HAVE to get this one, even if it sucks. I knew the Duke when he was a squeaky little side scroller. Actually, I liked DN1 & 2 better than DN3D. I was very into Quake and Quake II, moreso than any of the DNs, but the DNs were great fun.

It must have been 10+ years ago since I last played a game on the PC, switching over to consoles. Damn right I'm gonna be picking this up. Think I'll break out my original copy of DN3D and give that a play-through as well. Hmm...wonder if it plays okay in DOSBox...

Like others here I can verify it works well in DOSBox. For multiplayer in windows xDuke + YANG seems to have online players whenever I check. For the single player experience I recommend eduke32 (which can be further extended with the High Resolution Pack and Polymer 3d engine)

DN3D was also ported to XBLA, adding achievements and XBL multiplayer and such. I've played it through and I must say it translated pretty well to the dual-analog stick control scheme, with less fuss than getting the PC version working (which I played to death, including the Plutonium Pack expansion). So I'd recommend that if you're looking for an easy, current gen DN3D fix - coming from a guy who built multiple levels for DN3D on PC back in the day

I too have taken the "Believe it when I see it" view of DNF. Frankly I think this latest round is just a big publicity stunt. Come April 1st, Gearbox will announce "April Fools!" and reveal it was all a big hoax.

Neighbourhood trainee actuary here...let's have a look. We assume the age of a DN3D player follows a normal distribution with mean age 20 and variance of 25, giving 95% aged between about 10 and 30, which seems about right. We assume that all these people enjoyed DN3D for a year after Plutonium Pak was released, and so have to have survived from November 1996 to May 2011, which we will round down to 14 years (because non-integer years suck). We use the English Life Tables No 16, which give the mortality

Wrigley has announced that they are closing up shop, as they are running out of gum. They expect the world's gum supply to reach critical levels by late April; by the start of May we'll be all outta gum...

Special report coming to us from hell this evening, it seems that satan, lord of darkness, has been seen getting out his winter clothes and polishing the blades on his ice skates. We are still unaware of the cause of this behavior.

So... what would make it be "real" Duke to you? A fake-3D engine stuck in the 90s? IPX-only multiplayer? Big, chunky sprites and textures? Rewinding the last 15 years of game design just to recapture glory days of yours that may or may not have actually existed? The same abstract, easily replaceable plug-and-play concept of "feeling" that drives both Apple's profits and Fox News's viewership?

So... the attitude doesn't count? The over-the-top action? The weapons? The atmosphere? None of this counts?

"US release date: May 3rd. It will release worldwide three days later"

Games companies are forever bleeting on about piracy, so why the hell do they release a game in one country and tell everyone else in the world that they have to wait THREE days? As if loads of those people aren't going to pirate the game, when they may well have gone and bought it if they'd had the chance.

DN3D wasn't just a shooter. It was a shooter with a certain "attitude". It certainly set no hallmark for graphics or physics, but it sure was one for political incorrectness in games. Duke was a sexist, macho, bubblegum chewing (ok, ok, he was constantly out of gum, but he tried) pig. Not really the usual shining hero of shooters at this time.

What defined Duke was the wisecracking and the comments, the quite nonlinear levels and the blatant sexism. Let's be honest here, guys, that was part of the appeal. It was not the usual squeaky-clean world we usually got from shooters.

I hope that in our PC world there's still place for a sexist dinosaur like the Duke. It just wouldn't be Duke without tipping the strippers.

The marble tomb of Pope Julius II will be finished later this year. Sure, it won't be by Michaelangelo. It won't necessarily be his vision. It is being rushed to completion by people who had no previous connection to the early 16th century project. And no one knows or cares who Pope Julius II is anymore, but it will be finally finished.

This is be a bit off the Duke Nukem release date topic. But I work on the gameinformer.com site and just wanted to mention how freakin' excited I am that we got Slashdotted. Some people go their whole lives without ever feeling the Slashdot Effect. Wooohoooo!

Apple was the example because they're the most visible. Google sometimes does unannounced releases, but they tend to be quiet about it. Is there a generic term for that tactic? "Surprise release"? "Controlled leak"?

DNF has had so many failed and delayed releases that every announcement about it is justifiably treated like a joke. If some company is actually working on it and plans on releasing it, they should keep quiet about it.

Actually there is a very large likelihood that a lot of the buzz around Apple products is from deliberately leaked information. That way Apple gets a ton of free press, and can keep their image squeaky clean.

Do you think Duke Nukem Forever will require more than 640KB of conventional memory?

Yes, you will need to create a DR DOS boot floppy that will load all your drivers in the upper memory area between 640k and 1000. You should be able to get it to work as long as nothing else loads but DNF.

Yeah... when I was watching trailers for this game I had never heard of Linux.Since then, I went and got a computer science degree, and now run nothing but Linux at home.... on my laptop, workstation, SheevaPlug, Xbox, PS3, router, and phone.Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo, Gentoo, OpenWrt, and Android respectively.

I stopped using Wine too... don't think there will be a Linux port.At most I could hope for a PS3 version (maybe there is.... I didn't RTFA).

Of course that they were wrong... all the methods their used to predict the future were pretty unreliable, else they would be here instead of us. In the other hand we have new, reliable tools to know that the end of the world will be in May 2. Civilization has definitely evolved, even if was a bit too late.